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More than a decade later, Cheever is still awash in remorse, denial and booze. He bullies his wife Mary, terrifies his daughter and reflects, "I have the characteristics of a bastard." Cheever's sexuality escapes from the closet: "His soft gaze follows me, settles on me, and I have a deadly itchiness in my crotch. If he should put a hand on my thigh I would not remove it; if I should chance to meet him in the shower I would tackle him." He also has affairs with women and asks himself, "Would I sooner nuzzle D.'s bosom or squeeze R.'s enlarged pectorals?"
Rereading his early notebooks, Cheever accurately observes that "what emerges are two astonishing contests, one with alcohol and one with my wife." He gives Mary a typewriter. She acknowledges it 11 months later. They reconcile. They argue violently about his affairs. One entry says volumes about the temperature of this family crucible: "I find on the floor of Ben's room an unmailed letter . . . He is alone, he says. He is crying. He is alone with Mum and Dad, the two most self-centered animals in the creation."
With a comparatively small body of work, Cheever established himself as the Chekhov of the American suburb, investing railroad stations, tract houses and their owners with an amalgam of poetry, comedy and pathos. But that was in his fiction. The journals written before his renunciation of liquor, if not infidelity, reveal a blundering father, a conniving lover and a narcissistic mind. Noting that John Updike has made the cover of TIME, Cheever grumbles, "My own stubborn and sometimes idle prose has more usefulness." When the "estimable" Saul Bellow publishes a breakthrough novel, the diarist petulantly notes, "I have written first person slang long before 'Augie March' appeared."
Mary and the children are Cheever's literary executors. Why would they allow him -- as well as themselves -- to be so unflatteringly exposed? Is it a measure of revenge against the man who caused so many injuries? Or a matter of royalties? According to New Yorker editor Robert Gottlieb, Cheever wanted his notebooks to be published; the family is simply honoring his wishes. How much honor accrues to the request will be debated for years to come.
Was Cheever an artist? A monster? A tragic clown? Journals indicates that he was all three, suggesting that his life could provide the basis of a provocative and controversial film. Take away a hundred pounds, and Marlon Brando might be ideal for the title role.